Ambrotos
by kusegoto
Summary: (Мор. Утопия / Pathologic) It is early dawn. There is a corpse to be found. A funeral will happen, and we will begin to build our stage. Mark Immortell from Pathologic 2.


There is a man dying in the grass.

He is found by an older man from the village. He is put back together by a doctor and returned to his theatre. He will never walk without a limp again. No one asks what his name is because everyone already knows it.

A pen rolls off the table. The author of today's story could not finish the second half. We'll have to make do with what we can.

* * *

The girl — the new one — can't speak well. He told her that if you hold your head high and strain your chin, the words come out faster. So she angles her head back and looks him in the eye.

"Oleg wanna know when we're going," she says.

"Soon," he replies, turning away. His jaw hurts just looking at her. "Tell him I said he should start packing. Has Eliza put the children to bed?"

The girl doesn't like to speak.

"What did you say?"

"Kids' in the cart."

"Good. She knows not to wake them. Run along."

* * *

Mark sighs with his jaw held shut.

"I should have called a doctor," he muses.

"You don't need one," Clara says. She's the one pacing, from one of the lights to the next. She doesn't look at him, so he stops looking at her. "He wouldn't have saved me in time. I've been paying attention to the clocks around here, you know. They don't roll back. They can't roll back."

"You shouldn't be tinkering with things you cannot comprehend, girl," Mark replies, the head of his cane resting on his palm. He scuffed the brass at some point, but he doesn't remember moving from his point on the stage.

"Oh, I'm not. I just noticed, last time I slept."

"That was at the House of the Living, correct?"

"You've got a good memory."

"We all have our strengths." He knocks the heel of his cane against the stage just as Clara jumps off it. "off you go, then."

The door opens to night. Changeling disappears, and the lights go out.

* * *

She dies again. He makes a joke that he'll have to source her role to the other one. She stays in the coffin and doesn't hurry out, because she's cracked the code: "Time doesn't move, so I can plan in here."

She won't remember when she leaves the theatre. Clara looks at him at one point, and he's elected to take a seat. She lays back down and fumbles with one of the fish hooks caught in her scarf.

"What's the plan if none of us solve the mystery?" she asks.

"I expect more than the three of you laying down in your coffins and accepting everything," he replies.

"So you do have hope."

"Hope is a funny word. I would consider it basic expectations."

"Well, you have to believe in something for it to reach that point. Hope is the core of motivation. You can't have an expectation without hope." Clara sits up. "Even if you don't consider us alive."

"You're more outspoken than your comrades," Mark says. They're staring at each other, trying to sift through the other's purpose. "Less argumentative."

"I've learned a couple of things," Clara admits. She climbs free from her coffin. "Do you have any control over the men with knives? I don't want to die."

"Don't we all," Mark says, and Changeling leaves once again.

* * *

A man enters the caravan when the ones outside begin to set camp. He fumbles with his hat in his hands.

"Did I call on you?" he is asked.

"No boss," the ring leader is told.

The sky is changing outside. Neither of them recognize the colours. An ashtray holds the stubs of cigarettes; he hasn't found his role's niche just yet. A fresh one rests between his fingers, with one leg crossed over the other.

He smiles for the man. It is a smile he shares only for him. It is not positive.

"Is it about your departure again?"

"Truth he told," the man admits, "I don't know how much is cut out for me. I don't want to change or create anymore. Was thinking of a more… stable job."

"I hear there's plenty of work in the capital. I'll drive us there."

"They're just kids. We shouldn't-"

"We clear the mind and give them a future," the would-be traveller is told. The cigarette is picked up from its dish. "It's a side project. Why have you let it consume you so?"

Outside the sky is changing. The sky is changing outside. The sky falls to night. The clouds gather.

* * *

Mark strides past him, briskly. Rubin balks at the table. "I want to know something: what have you created?"

"Nothing," he replies. Mark laughs, low and unimpressed.

"What have you _made? _What have you _done?_ Have you never-"

Mark stops moving first. He looks at the body, and then at the warden. He exhales a breath he shouldn't have kept.

He walks towards the tired soul, and reaches up to meet his height. He grabs Rubin's jaw, turning his head. His skin is coarse like hempen wool. There is sand in his stitches. All flesh, according to the eye.

"No," he tells himself, and the masked body on the table drops their hands. "He shouldn't be here. Scrap it all; we cut him out."

They slide their limbs from the table. Mark wipes his hand down Rubin's robes to get the sand out of his fingernails. Rubin's eyes are dull, and watches the director, absent of soul.

"I wonder what you're made of," he wonders aloud, and pats Rubin's shoulder. "Off you go. It's midnight; back to work."

He turns from Mark and marches to the shadow. There are a lot less bodies. There is a lot less sky. Mark hums in the darkness.

* * *

A stack of papers waits to be read through and edited. It is a play in the making. Mark thanks his working habits to youthful vigor.

"I won't argue with you," he says, with a patient voice. It feels like it lacks the right tone — he can feel it on the back of his tongue, right where his throat begins. "If you leave, then you leave."

The man closes his eyes tight. He puts his hat back on. "There's a good chap," the director says, but he leaves before anything sticks.

Outside, a campfire crackles. There is no colour in the sky, but even he can tell there's a change in the narrative. He puts down the cigarette the way one would if they realized they didn't want it anymore.

* * *

He has a memory of sleeping in a bed. It is small, clinical, and he is in pain. It is likely fake. He knows this.

* * *

There is a man lying dead in the grass.

His body was found at five o' clock in the morning by a man walking to work. No one comes and claims the body to be of a brother, a father, a coworker.

He is buried in a small plot at the graveyard you can see from the fence. No one leaves him flowers. No one leaves him with words. Eventually, people wonder if there is anything buried. But soon enough, people start to forget again.

* * *

A young girl fumbles with a doll. Her even younger brother pours sand into a cup.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

"Nothing,"she says. "Can we make a mansion for a ballerina?"

* * *

The blade sinks sharp into his lower back. It may have hit his spine, but it also may have missed. It's the most he's felt in decades.

His cane drops first. He tries to turn his head but cannot find the strength. His assailant pushes him off the blade because his body refused to drop.

Something about Brutus crosses his mind. But it wouldn't fit in with the rest of the story; so he falls to the ground, and listens to the footsteps in the grass until there is nothing but the wind. This iteration does not have the doctor; instead, there is only darkness.

* * *

"What are you writing?" The girl who couldn't speak before stands behind him. She can speak, now that she stole from the town.

"I'll become a storyteller," he replies. She walks around and stares at his hands, clutching a pen incorrectly. "Maybe it will be better work than conducting."

"Just do both," she says. "You write the story, so you ought to see how it plays out."

He doesn't respond for some time. "Perhaps."

She leaves the room, fixing her skirt as she leaves. Even with her dress, she moves as if she is bound in a cocoon. Perhaps that will be the new costume.

* * *

He sits in his own chair, put together, with every stitch back in place, in an empty theatre. In his lap, there is a notebook, with his own handwriting spelling letters he cannot read. Mark tuts at his own failure, flipping a page. Three paths, and not a single one explains what happened before.

He runs one hand through his hair, now that there is no one to see. He cannot tell its shade or texture. Is he supposed to? Was the sense of touch given to him?

The memory is a fickle thing. Human memory, even more so. Thankfully, he is unbound by such.

There is sand in the theatre, spilled like slashes sacks of grain. Outside, a man's body is being carried from the morning grass to a hospital. Even he is uncertain if he will be pronounced dead.

The Cathedral can predict time. But the Theatre can predict outcomes.


End file.
